So you all know the story of Hamburg, it is quite a common career, but I've been planning on doing a career since they got relegated in April/May due to the Bundesliga clock (a clock charting the time that Hamburg had spent in the Bundesliga, which started with the league's formation in 1963 and was reset this summer) and them being the only team that's been ever-present in the Bundesliga until last season. They had a lot of success in the late 70s and early 80s, most notably winning the Champions League in 1983, and now it's up to me to restore them to their former glory. So, you've got a team that has historically done very well but has had a slight blip and now needs to bounce back immediately to ensure the rot stops, so the Hamburg board have brought in a new manager, a former Dutch international, with the best coaching badges available, so surely they would provide appropriate funding for the new manager to bring in the players he needs?
Oh Brilliant

So, no new additions for the first season, so let's have a look at the squad and tactics I'll be using in this save. It's a German save, so a Gegenpressing system is accurate, right?
This is already a strong 2. Bundesliga team predicted to finish 2nd, which would grant automatic promotion back to the Bundesliga
Two standout players are the very German sounding Aaron Hunt and former Spurs and Fulham midfielder Lewis Holtby
Fiete Arp is a player most of you should be familiar with, having been a wonderkid for the last few FMs, but Tatsuya Ito, Josha Vagnoman and Vasilije Janjicic all also have very good potential
So, onto preseason, and after a couple of routine wins over inferior foreign opponents, we claim 2 impressive victories over European Powerhouses Manchester City and Bayern Munich to maintain 100% record throughout pre-season
Our 2. Bundesliga campaign starts slowly, with feeble goalless draws against lower opposition in Holstein Kiel (who, to their credit, did make the relegation playoff IRL having finished 3rd) and SV Sandhausen, and it looked as though it was going to be a third against Bielefeld until Hwang Hee-Chan, on loan from Salzburg, popped up in the 92nd minute to give us a 1-0 win, which we followed up with a less dramatic win by the same scoreline away to Dynamo Dresden. There was a slight scare in the first round of the cup against Dynamo Berlin as they took the lead, before Arp immediately equalised and Ito and Mangala sealed a nervy win

So, September's come around and with it comes yet another Centre Back injury, with Lacroix out for 4 weeks, meaning I now have only 2 senior centre-backs, and there's only one man that can fix my defensive crisis. Step up... Steven Caulker
On the pitch, it's more of the same story: we're dominating most games but aren't clinical enough and it's costing us points.
1-1 draws with Heidenheim and our city rivals St. Pauli come either side of victories over Jahn Regensburg and Greuther Furth. The good news is that after two months, we're 2nd and still unbeaten, however, we need to be more clinical and better at the back. Heidenheim's goal came from an absurd source in our Right-back Gotoku Sakai, who drilled a back pass from the halfway line with the sort of power he wouldn't dream of putting into a shot, and Pollersbeck was helpless. There's been a few clubs sniffing around Sakai, and if he continues to do things like that, he'll be out of here in no time